Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Does Suzy Q's Get An "A"?

Over the last few months I've been working on something called the Doughnut Project. The goal of the Doughnut Project is to sample as many different Tim Horton's doughnuts as possible. Every time I try a new doughnut I post it on our Instagram feed as well as where I bought it on our Candy Map. It's been a fun project, however one of my friends, Adriana, has been frustrated with me. She's of the mind that Tim Horton's doughnuts are sub-par, and that a man like myself should not eat these second rate doughnuts.

Adriana has been trying her hardest to get me to expand my doughnut eating experiences, and she started with a local place (here in Ottawa) known as Suzy Q's. Suzy Q's is what I would call a trendy bakery. Trendy bakeries are places that generally sell only one or two different items, they're also often sparsely decorated, and only hire young people to work at the front. With trendy bakeries you also often find that excess is the creative inspiration, that or sometimes weird flavour combinations. More often than not this kind of bakery does not appeal to me, mostly because many of these places focus on the weird or the excess, rather than putting out a good product. It's very rare for a trendy bakery to impress me, but when it does it's often spectacular.

Suzy Q's does fall into the category of trendy bakery, and at times it also falls into the traps of trendy bakeries. They seem to fall into this trap more in the excessive than the strange flavours, however there are a few strange flavours as well. The good thing is that while they do fall into the traps sometimes, they also offer some pretty tasty doughnuts as well. I sampled four different doughnuts, the Grasshopper, Dirty Chocolate, Salted Caramel, Bumbleberry.

I picked the Dirty Chocolate because when I checked out their website, I thought it looked the best. I tried the Salted Caramel because when I went to the store it looked the best. I picked the Bumbleberry because it looked very pretty. Finally I let the guy at the counter pick the Grasshopper. One of these doughnuts was very disappointing, one was OK, and two were pretty good.

The worst was shockingly the Dirty Chocolate, it was bland and had a weird texture. The OK doughnut was the salted caramel, it tasted fine, but the texture of the caramel was a little weak. I was really happy with both the Bumbleberry and Grasshopper, both had interesting textures, and I really liked the crunchy marshmallows on the Grasshopper. All around it was a fine experience, and I regret nothing, but it's not likely that I'll return to Suzy Qs.

The problem is simple, price. I paid ten dollars for four doughnuts. I'm not sure if you can just buy one doughnut, but that price is not listed on their sign. So I felt a little forced to buying four doughnuts, and at ten bucks they're not cheap. It's not that I object to the idea of paying two-fifty for a doughnut, but that doughnut better blow my mind away. These doughnuts were OK, but they didn't change the way I saw doughnuts. They weren't a creative leap in the field of doughnuts, and the quality of the doughnut itself wasn't anything inspiring. If someone gave me one to eat, I'd be happy, but I don't know if I could justify paying that much again for something that didn't blow my mind.

Do you know a doughnut place that I should try, let me know on Facebook or Twitter. Also, how do you spell the name of these ring shaped pastries, doughnut or donut?